What Is This, A Joke?
by Moriwen1
Summary: On a quest for his soul, Spike walks into a bar. Nothing will ever be the same again.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: What Is This, A Joke?

**Author**: Moriwen1

**Prompt**: Spike walks into a bar and meets . . . Aslan! (Challenge from intoabar)

**Fandoms**: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Chronicles of Narnia (also Angel)

**Word Count**: 4,627

**Rating**: PG13 for language, nudity, and excessive symbolism.

**Summary**: On a quest for his soul, Spike walks into a bar. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Spike belongs to Joss Whedon. Aslan belongs to C. S. Lewis, insofar as an omnipotent being can belong to someone. Susan belongs to C. S. Lewis too, but it took rthstewart to make me like her.

* * *

_"YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE REQUIRED CHALLENGES."_

_"Bloody right I have. Now give me what I came for. Make me what I was so Buffy can get what she deserves."_

_"VERY WELL. WE WILL RETURN . . . YOUR SOUL."_

* * *

There was a pause, which lengthened painfully. Spike stared through puffy eyes at the menacing demon. "Any time now is good, really. No rush."

The demon managed to look sheepish without letting up on the menace. "WE . . . CANNOT ACTUALLY DO THAT," it boomed.

"What, now?" Spike could barely process the words. He felt broken, and dizzy. A drink would go down really well right now.

"WHAT, YOU THINK JUST ANYONE CAN RESTORE SOULS? FIDDLY LITTLE THINGS. WE KNOW A GUY WHO KNOWS A GUY, THOUGH."

"This is bloody ridiculous. I am not going through all this rigamarole again. I'll handle myself, thank _you._" Spike dragged himself to an upright position, clutching to the cave wall, and made to leave. Before he could stagger more than a few steps towards the mouth of the cave, he found himself intercepted by the demon, who was holding out a yellow legal pad.

"WE HAD A BARGAIN, VAMPIRE. IT CANNOT GO UNFULFILLED."

Spike tried to doge, but he wasn't really up to it, and whichever way he turned, the paper was thrust in his face. Finally he gave up, snatched the notepad (growling "what-bloody-ever, give me a break,") and stumbled out into the dim moonlight. He made it about six steps further before his abused legs went on strike and he found himself face down on the ground, where he lay for several minutes before he summoned up the strength to pull himself up on his elbows. He almost didn't look at the paper, but curiosity got the better of him.

It took Spike a few minutes to decipher the scrawl on the pad, which was evidently some sort of address. Finally, though, he made it out, ripped off the top sheet, and stuffed it in his pocket, leaving the rest of the pad on the ground. Then, slowly and with little noises of pain, he forced himself onto his feet again. He had a long way to go before the sun rose.

"Los Angeles. Should have bloody well known. It's always Los Angeles."

* * *

As bars went, it wasn't so bad, Spike supposed. A little cheesy for his taste, and the decor was to burn your eyes out, but there was something to be said for being able to walk up to the bartender and asked what they made that had blood in it, and strong, thank you.

"Unholy Sherry's on special tonight."

"And that is?"

"Extra virgin with a splash of sherry, dark chocolate, olive, frosted rim."

"That. And a blooming onion, if you have them."

"We don't. Sorry."

"Just the drink, then." Spike wondered idly what exactly made blood _extra _virgin.

When money had been exchanged for alcohol, Spike sat back and surveyed the bar. LA was full of demon bars (some more openly so than others) and this one was nothing exceptional. More seedy than most, maybe, and he'd never seen barstools quite that shade of fuchsia before, but there was the usual mix of humanoid and non-humanoid, of horns and teeth and slime and ridges where there really shouldn't be ridges, and here and there a patron who looked perfectly normal and was probably a half-breed or a vampire (fangirls would visit now and then but usually places a bit more upscale than this), and oh god, what _was _that thing?

Spike was perfectly conscious that his mouth had dropped wide open, but he couldn't seem to muster up the willpower to close it again, because there was no way in any hell he'd ever heard of that that thing should be in a bar. It just -

And then he looked down at the crumpled yellow paper and smudged writing, and back up at _it,_ and -

Bloody hell. _That _was his contact?

How had it even got here? Not only was it conspicuous (how had he not noticed it before?) but it was enormous, ludicrously so, and at least twice as wide as the door. They didn't _come _that big. Did they?

Without tearing his eyes from the thing, Spike groped for his drink, found it, and downed it in one gulp. Hurrah for liquid courage. He'd need it, if he was going through with this. Of course, if he had half a brain, he'd split now and cut his losses, but where was the fun in that? And when had he ever claimed to have half a brain? "Off to see the wizard, then," he muttered under his breath, hopping off the barstool and weaving through the crowd. He bumped into a demon with three heads as he passed; it waved its tentacles at him irritably, and Spike responded with a growl and a flash of fangs, before returning to his human face and moving on. Not that he wasn't up for a good brawl, but he had work to do.

Working his way through the packed bar was its own adventure, but sooner than he liked, Spike had reached his destination. His glass was still clutched in his hand, but all of a sudden, his throat was unaccountably dry, and he had to try several times before he found his voice. What was coming over him? he wondered, and then (Bugger this) he managed to get out in what was definitely _not _a squeak, "Hullo, are you the-"

Then it turned and _looked _at him, and Spike's voice went missing altogether as he found himself face-to-face with the huge, golden lion.

He'd have run. He'd have run in a heartbeat, his muscles were all tensed and twitching, his taut nerves yelling _let's get out of here! _and Spike was all for that idea. But the lion (Lion, it definitely deserved a capital L) - its eyes met his, and he was frozen. Wanted desperately to escape, couldn't bear to look away. Terrified, thrilled. "God _damn,_" he muttered involuntarily, and then felt the habitual guilt of his childhood ("Thou shalt not take the Lord's Name in vain, William"), and how long had it been since he'd thought twice about cussing? But this was like in church, or in front of your mum. Not done.

Since Spike's voice was somewhere off in the Bahamas with a stiff drink, it was the Lion who spoke first. "Hello, Spike."

He found himself looking over his shoulder for this Spike fellow, before he realized he wasn't William anymore. Spike. Right. "Hello, er, . . ."

"You know my name, Son of Adam." Another long look, and the Lion added, "But you may call me Aslan, if it is easier for you."

"Right. Well. Bloody decent of you. Drink on me?" Spike was babbling, he knew it, but he had to keep saying the stupid meaningless things because otherwise he was going to come up empty and say _did my mum ever really love me? _or _will it hurt, the soul? _

Or maybe that wouldn't matter, because the Lion seemed determined to carry on with his cryptic-fest and ignore anything Spike said. "It has been a long time since you have spoken to me, my child. But I have not forgotten you, and I do not think you have altogether forgotten me. I can help you remember, if you wish."

Spike interlaced his fingers behind his back, and bent them the wrong way till it hurt. "That's dandy and all, but I'm just here for the soul, thanks."

The Lion ignored him. "Thank you for the poems," it said, and wasn't that the last bloody straw? He hadn't written his poems for the Lion, they were none of its business, and he couldn't take another moment of this ridiculous - oh, to hell with it.

Spike bolted.

* * *

He'd run blindly out of the bar, past the bouncers, into the crisp night air of LA. He'd kept running, past tall buildings, under bridges, through alleys and onto the beachfront, where his footfalls kicked up the sand and it fell back to earth, gritty inside his shoes. He could feel it behind him, the Lion (he looked over his shoulder, but there was no one there); could feel the warmth of its breath on his cold skin, feel whatever quality it shared with crosses that made him instinctively cringe and wince.

Eventually, Spike slowed and stopped. It was bitterly cold. A chill wind blew in from the sea, and gray anvil-shaped clouds foreboded rain. The beach was altogether empty; no tourists were venturing out in this weather, and even the omnipresent homeless had found some more hospitable place to huddle. The light beginning to break through the heavy mist meant that Spike would have to find shelter, too.

It didn't take him long to find an entrance to the sewers. (It would have been quicker if he hadn't been looking over his shoulder or startling at a noise every three steps. The streets were still and empty.) A clamber through a manhole later, he was safe from the sun at least. It wasn't the nicest place he'd stayed, but it was far from the worst, and there was no finding a better with the sun half up already. He'd have to wait till sunset, then get out of this damn place, hope _it _didn't follow him.

* * *

Spike slept fitfully. He dreamt that he was standing in an immense empty room, reciting poetry into a microphone, things that he'd read once and half-remembered.

"Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree  
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety  
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained  
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said  
Shall these bones live? shall these  
Bones live?"

He didn't remember any more after that, so he set down the microphone and walked off the stage. The Lion was waiting for him, great and golden and terrible.

"Go away," Spike said. He was naked. One of those dreams.

"You can run and run but you can't escape," said the Lion. "I am everywhere. I am inside you."

"To hell with that. I don't know you. I never took you in."

He was in his crypt - had he ever left? and Buffy was there, kissing him. Naked wasn't so bad, in that case. He let her pull him down onto the bed. "God, I love you," he whispered, reaching out for her. His hand found fur.

"Yes, you do," said the Lion. "And I told you, you can call me Aslan."

"Go away," Spike said again. "I don't want you. I want Buffy. This is my dream."

"Death is my gift," said the Lion, and disappeared.

* * *

When Spike woke up, it was dark. Of course, it had been dark when he went to sleep, too; he was in a sewer, after all. But he didn't catch on fire when he cautiously lifted the manhole cover, so he climbed out into the glittering neon of nighttime in LA.

The quickest way back to Sunnydale was to steal a car, and Spike was in the middle of doing just that when he saw a flash of golden fur and smelled the hot damp smell of the Lion. Cursing under his breath, he shoved the car into gear, stepped on the accelerator, and took a wheel-screeching turn. The Lion might be everywhere, but Spike had been around the block a few times, and one of the first lessons you learned in the underworld was how to deal with someone dangerous who had it out for you.

Find some one bigger, and sic 'em on them.

Steering with one hand, Spike stabbed numbers on his mobile. It rang once, twice; Spike ran a red, then heard the click of someone picking up on the other end. "Hullo, love," he said, cutting off the young woman reciting "Angel Investigations, we help the helpless."

Silence for a moment, as he listened, then, "A - friend of Angel's. He there? Tell him it's - nah, don't tell him who it is. Say a friend."

Another pause. "_Well. _Sorry I missed it all. You ever see him again, tell him I said so. Cheers." He tossed the phone to the floor of the passenger side without bothering to hang up. That was no good, then. No great loss, there were plenty of dangerous people in LA. In fact . . . A smile crept onto his lips, and Spike began to hum as he drove. He knew just who would love to hear about the Lion.

* * *

There was no parking, of course. This was downtown LA, after all. Luckily, being evil solved that (solved lots of things, really): the car wasn't Spike's, so he parked it illegally (blocking in half a lot, just for kicks) and walked off, whistling.

Wolfram & Hart was big and sterile and sleek, glass-and-metal and minimalist built fifty years before that was the style of the future (side benefits of employing lots of psychics). A discreet alarm went off the moment he stepped through the door, and a very well-dressed man with manicured nails politely asked Spike to step aside for a quick search. Five minutes and a pair of creepy mind-reader twins later, the obstacles had been reduced to just the usual bureaucratic ones. Spike's name got him a good way, and the Lion's name got him further, and soon enough he was sitting in a posh leather chair in a cavernous office waiting for someone who he had been assured could help him with his "little problem."

And then the chrome door slid open smoothly and silently, revealing a well-groomed woman in a business suit. She looked middle-aged, and was probably older, but there was an almost invisible line in her silk stocking that could only be a concealed weapon, and the brooch with which she'd put up her gray hair was engraved with powerful runes; and even without that, her smile said it all. _I am a woman to be reckoned with._

"Hello," said the woman. "Susan Pevensie, PR."


	2. Chapter 2

Susan Pevensie didn't pace as Spike explained the situation to her. She stood utterly still, watching him with an intensity that reminded him eerily of Drusilla. Squirming slightly under her gaze, he recounted the trials, the demon in the cave, the trip to the bar, the Lion. How it had followed him, how it had just _appeared _places.

"Typical encounter," Susan said, flatly, when he had done.

"You've dealt with him before, then?"

"Why do you think they put me on this case? I'm an expert. He's very dangerous. Strongly empathic, mind-altering."

"Mind-altering? That don't sound so pleasant."

"It is. Pleasant, that is. That's why he's so deadly."

"Don't think he's altered mine, do you? Because I like folk to stay the hell out of my mind."

Susan took out a pamphlet from her jacket pocket, folded it open to a page in the middle, and handed it to Spike. _Potential side effects of prolonged contact, _it read, in print so small he had to strain to read it. _Dizziness, vomiting, ennui, lucid dreaming, existential angst, pregnancy, death._

"Explains the dreams, then," Spike said, half to himself. Susan looked at him, something that might have been interest flashing across her face.

"What sort of dreams?"

"Well. The bugger was in it."

"What else can you recall?"

Spike closed his eyes, thinking. "He said - he said he was everywhere. That I couldn't escape. And there was poetry. Eliot. Something about tigers."

"Eliot. You're not too far gone, then. When he starts in on the Song of Songs, it's hopeless." There was no humor in the woman's voice.

He had a zinger all ready to go, but Spike had hardly opened his mouth when Susan's impeccable jacket emitted a buzzing noise. She held up one hand in a gesture for silence that was accustomed to obedience, and with the other pulled out a phone, flipped it open, and held it to her ear. "Pevensie here."

After a pause, Susan spoke again, in the tone which seemed to be universal with her - not uninflected, but impersonal, crisp, businesslike. "Put District C-16 on lockdown. A through F code silver. Dispatch strike forces to all SCC's within a three-mile radius of each sighting. And I want Fowler's division handling the PR aspects, take up to four secretarial units as needed." She closed the phone and pocketed it without waiting for a reply, and, without looking to see if Spike was listening, added "You, come with me," and set off briskly.

* * *

The car was long, and black, and had more gadgets than Spike had ever seen outside of a spy movie. Susan drove it herself, wearing white kid gloves she took from the glovebox, and even Spike found himself wincing at the sheer madness of some of her maneuvers. He didn't have a problem with breaking traffic laws, but he preferred to get wherever they were going undecapitated.

"Brake's the one in the middle, love," he said tersely, involuntarily clutching at the armrest.

"Pevensie."

"What?"

"My name's Pevensie. Susan Pevensie. You can call me ma'am." She wrenched the wheel with surprising strength, bringing the car to a screeching stop in a dingy alleyway.

The radio crackled, and a static-y voice came through. "Number one, you here?"

Susan tapped a button and replied, "Number one primed and waiting."

"Sectors E through F are cleared. Ready to commence Operation Lionheart."

"What all's that?" Spike asked, as he followed Susan out of the car and off at a brisk pace.

"We're isolating him. Narrowing down the areas."

"Can you do that?"

"His physical manifestation, yes. Our mages are very good. As long as we can distract him - lure him in to focus himself on one point - then we have rituals that can trap him. Then we do whatever we have to do to banish him."

"And how are you planning to distract him?" Spike looked at Susan, then froze. "Oh. No. God no. You're suffering under a misconception, love, that's not - "

"Pevensie," Susan corrected, then placed a hand on Spike's elbow to halt him, pointing at a building. "In there."

Spike stared at the concrete atrocity with its sickly felt banners. "A church? You've got to be joking, love, that's just not happening."

"Pevensie," Susan repeated. "The Black Guard are on their way to desecrate it. It'll hold him off from the bait for long enough."

"The bait being - "

"You, yes. Go."

* * *

He'd sat stiffly in a pew for he didn't know how many hours, trying not to wince at the low-level discomfort of the consecrated space, and afraid to move surrounded as he was by holy symbols. He tried not to _think, _either; the chaos of the last few days must have been getting to him, because his mind was racing, filled with thoughts and emotions that were strange and out of place. Faces of dead people flashing before his eyes, saying _you killed me, you killed me, _and when he told them to shut up it was Buffy, looking at him with hatred and fear and saying _now you see why I can never love you._ So he clenched his fists and emptied his mind and stared straight in front of him till his eyes hurt, and somehow between that and the monotonous chanting of the black-robed desecrators he fell asleep.

He dreamt he was back in the bar, and he was drinking. Drinking and drinking, but he was still thirsty, no matter how many times the bartender refilled his tumbler.

"What, more?" said the bartender, who had no face.

"She told me we could still be friends," he found himself sobbing. "No, no, that was the other one. Other one. Yes, more. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love."

The bartender filled the glass again. Spike drank, and it was dry like dust. "Go away, I don't want you," he said to the Lion, who was standing behind him, warm breath on his face.

"You always want me. You were looking for me and you found me, and now you're afraid because you've forgotten how to stop looking."

He was in the desert, searching for his soul. He'd lost it, left it somewhere here, and it was buried in the endless shifting dunes, and God he was thirsty.

"Water, water everywhere," he whispered, "and not a bloody - "

"WAKE UP! WAKE UP!"

* * *

Spike started and opened his eyes. Susan was standing over him, shaking him and shouting. "Wake up, you fool, wake up, what were you thinking, falling asleep - "

"Relax, love, I'm awake," he mumbled, blinking. "You really hate him, don't you?"

"Pevensie," Susan said, but it was automatic and without venom. "He killed my family."

"He what?"

"My family. My sister was seventeen." Susan's face was terrifyingly empty. "He lied and seduced them, and he took them one by one. My sister Lucy and my brother Peter, and Edmund almost saw through it, he was always the brightest, but he wanted so much to be loved. It's the Lion's darkest trick. He really does love them, the ones he takes."

"So he says."

"Yes. And he took them, like a worm in their minds, they couldn't think of anything else, I asked Lucy once and she didn't remember a moment of her childhood when he wasn't there. They hated me by the end."

"Because you didn't love him?"

"Of course I loved him." Susan looked at the vampire with disdain. "You can't help it. I cried over him at night. I was only twenty-one. They hated me because I fought him. He doesn't like that." She smiled, small and vicious. "I was _very _good at it. He showed us magic, just a little, just so he could teach us never to use it, and you can't imagine what that did to Lucy. She had a talent for it, you see, and he punished her for it, made her friends hate her, and Lucy cried at night, every night, every night until she died. So I learned magic, small little magics you could sew into your stockings or paint behind your ears or in the small of your back, and nobody knew. And then I went to America to learn from a coven there, and he killed my family. Get up."

"Where are we going?"

"Out." Susan led him out of the church, where a helicopter was waiting for them. As she helped him buckle the complicated straps, she explained, "He's infested this place, deep down. We'll have to destroy it for miles."

"Destroy?"

"Bomb it," Susan shouted, over the roaring of the rising helicopters. "Annihilate it. Sow it with salt. Curse it for seven generations."

"Won't that kill a lot of people?"

"You care?"

* * *

Afterwards, he walked through the ruins with Susan. It should have been quiet, among the blackened buildings, stepping over corpses too burnt to be bloody, but instead there was the constant insistent roar of distant traffic, and the intermittent sirens of emergency vehicles daring the edges of the warzone. "The humans will stay out of it," Susan had explained to him, as he tried to numb himself to the creeping guilt for the deaths. "They'll say it was terrorists, but they'll sense the dark magic we put here to keep him out, and it'll keep them out. Most of them, anyway. Some of them will be drawn to it."

"Left here," said Spike. She'd asked him to show her where the bar had been. A small special ops team was trailing behind them, guarding a trio of mages who would make sure no portal or other easy access route for the Lion was hidden there.

Suddenly, Susan froze. He almost asked her why, and then Spike also saw the great golden beast padding towards them through the wreckage of the city. He started to move - whether towards the Lion or away from him, he wasn't sure - but Susan stepped in front of him as the Lion reached them.

"Daughter of Eve," said the Lion, in his deep soft voice. "I have been waiting for you."

"You can't be here," said Susan, but her voice was high like a young girl's, and quivered.

"I am who am. I was here in the beginning and I will be here in the end. Don't you understand? This doesn't keep me away. Death doesn't keep me away. Death is my gift."

"Hey!" Spike exclaimed, stepping forward. "Not to break up the party, but you owe me something, Lion."

"I owe you nothing," said the Lion, "but I will give you many things."

"Yes, well, thanks for the mysticism, but I'm just looking for what you owe me. My soul, then I'll be out of here."

"Your soul?" The Lion looked at him with piercing eyes. "I gave you your soul when first you saw me. At the bar."

Spike opened his mouth to object, but then he remembered - the rush of painful warmth, the strange feelings he'd fought off, the constant guilt - and he decided against saying anything, and forgot to close it again.

The men in their hazard gear started to move forward threateningly, but Susan stayed them with a hand. "I want none of you, Aslan. I've told you before, and I'll tell you again. There is _nothing _of you in me. I've made sure of that. So go. There's nothing for you here."

"Of you, we will speak another day," said the Lion. "But the other is mine."

"Bugger this," said Spike, and strode off towards the bar. He thought he'd seen a bottle of liquor there, still (miraculously) intact. Behind him, Susan tore her eyes from the Lion, and turned, walked off with a confident stride and tears running down her high cheekbones. Some of her guards lingered longer than others, but all of them followed her, one by one.

Spike kept walking, walking in the general direction of Sunnydale. There was a woman there who might or might not want him back, and plenty of things he could hurt, and the drink he desperately needed. He walked briskly, and didn't look back over his shoulder, not once.

And, inexorably, the great golden Lion padded after him.


End file.
